After a cripplingly disappointing Fallout 3 who else could fix the system but the people who had experience on working on the classic Fallout games at Obsidian? (Sadly, Troika wasn't a thing anymore by then) New Vegas addresses everything that could be addressed. Open world still feels a bit cramped, but now tries to cover a much tinier area making the lack of overworld map from F1 and 2 much less noticeable and world more alive. Story, dialogue, characters, interactions are actually interesting and well written and the main criticism of F2 (the constant pop references) is now an optional trait. A lot of ideas from Van Buren (original F3 concept) and classic titles are reused. The variety of ways you can play is probably the biggest ever and all skills have use not just directly, but also in dialogue checks, making them even more useful. Of course, the core of the game, that being Fallout 3, is still deeply flawed, buggy and quite ugly looking. No mod or fanpatch since then could fix/change/rebalance in a really smart way that either. It is also still arguable (especially after the release of such projects like Wasteland 2) if going for a (probably) much cheaper to produce classic looking isometric spin-off wouldn't have lead to a better game in the end overall. It is also worth noting that the DLCs for the game were sadly quite disappointing, with only Old World Blues feeling more or less complete and balanced, while others feeling too short, or too unbalanced or too boring. But all that said, New Vegas is definitely the best Fallout game to come out since Fallout 2 and the only since then to try to stick to the original concepts of freedom of choice and exploration in an exciting adventure. And it does it incredibly well.
After a cripplingly disappointing Fallout 3 who else could fix the system but the people who had experience on working on the classic Fallout games at Obsidian? (Sadly, Troika wasn't a thing anymore by then) New Vegas addresses everything that could be addressed. Open world still feels a bit cramped, but now tries to cover a much tinier area making the lack of overworld map from F1 and 2 much less noticeable and world more alive. Story, dialogue, characters, interactions are actually interesting and well written and the main criticism of F2 (the constant pop references) is now an optional trait. A lot of ideas from Van Buren (original F3 concept) and classic titles are reused. The variety of ways you can play is probably the biggest ever and all skills have use not just directly, but also in dialogue checks, making them even more useful. Of course, the core of the game, that being Fallout 3, is still deeply flawed, buggy and quite ugly looking. No mod or fanpatch since then could fix/change/rebalance in a really smart way that either. It is also still arguable (especially after the release of such projects like Wasteland 2) if going for a (probably) much cheaper to produce classic looking isometric spin-off wouldn't have lead to a better game in the end overall. It is also worth noting that the DLCs for the game were sadly quite disappointing, with only Old World Blues feeling more or less complete and balanced, while others feeling too short, or too unbalanced or too boring. But all that said, New Vegas is definitely the best Fallout game to come out since Fallout 2 and the only since then to try to stick to the original concepts of freedom of choice and exploration in an exciting adventure. And it does it incredibly well.
